This Grand Life prototype now available!

It includes three tutorials explaining the basic game mechanics, set in the town of Tutorialville, located in the great country of Tutorialstan! The prototype also includes a work-in-progress Custom Game mode. It currently has a limited number of locations and includes the Chef career path, as well as some more ordinary occupations like janitor and salesperson.

You can also select your avatar and select some traits. Your starting traits is one of the important themes I want to highlight in the game. I want your starting conditions to have an impact on how difficult life is for you as the player. So hopefully you find that it’s much harder to have spare time when you are an alcoholic and need to drink all the time. Or find it easier to pay the rent when your rich parents give you free money each month.

I’ve found it challenging coming up with a cover image that represents the game accurately. At first I thought using a real-life city as the game map was a really cool game feature, but no one seemed to care! I spent hours and hours getting it to work! So I decided to go with something cleaner. As part of the design process, I came up with four key words to describe the tone of the game – humourous, personal, financial, choice. Then I looked up other life simulation games to see how they designed their cover art. Eventually I settled on having three characters, each representing a different part of the game. I commissioned an artist to create it for me:

The woman with the shopping bags represents buying and owning possessions. The man with a bag of money represents accumulating wealth. The student with books represents gaining knowledge through learning. These are the three main objectives in the game, along with the fourth objective – lifetime happiness.

So remember to try the prototype, which should give you an idea of what this game is about. It’s still rough around the edges and there isn’t much content, but the core mechanics are there. If you find it interesting, you can join our mailing list to receive news.